Anne's Day: Simply Splendid

One London newspaper described it as "a mad final fling before the winter of our discontent." For one brief shining moment last week, Britain forgot its economic troubles and basked in the splendid and stirring pageantry of a royal wedding. Before 1,500 invited guests and a television audience of 500 million people round the world, Princess Anne, 23, Queen Elizabeth's only daughter, married her commoner cavalryman, Captain Mark Phillips, 25, in the Gothic splendor of Westminster Abbey.

London even shed its sodden skies, and the burnished brass and gold leaf of the cavalry and coaches sparkled in the autumn sunshine. About the only sour note was sounded over the commemorative poem written by Sir John Betjeman; it was his first official literary effort since being named Britain's poet laureat. One Labor M.P. described the lyric as "turgid, unromantic and stamped with mediocrity," and called for Betjeman's resignation. The verse:

Hundreds of birds in the air And millions of leaves on the pavement. Then the bells pealing on Over palace and people outside. All for the words "I will" To love's most holy enslavement. What can we do but rejoice With a triumphing bridegroom and bride?

Loaded down with sleeping bags and hot coffee, the first spectators began lining up along the wedding route the afternoon before. "It's a beautiful night, and we'll be perfectly happy," said a woman from Hampshire, who was preparing to sleep on the sidewalk with her 11-year-old granddaughter. "I wanted my granddaughter to remember that she saw this with her grandmother." By early morning the streets were bedecked with 12-ft.-long Union Jacks and white and purple flags bearing the initials A and M. Tens of thousands of people jammed the route to catch a glimpse of the glass coach bearing the princess and her father, the Duke of Edinburgh. All in all there were nine horse-drawn carriages in the procession, accompanied by the Queen's Household Cavalry, resplendent in scarlet-plumed gold helmets.

The ceremony itself, performed by the Most Rev. Michael Ramsey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was eloquently simple. There was a flourish of trumpets from the Queen's Dragoon Guards, Mark's regiment. Then, while the guests sang Glorious Things of Thee Art Spoken, the princess strolled down the aisle on her father's arm. Behind her followed her only attendants: Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, 9, daughter of Princess Margaret, and Anne's brother Prince Edward, also 9. She promised "to love, cherish and to obey." The groom slipped onto her finger a wedding band that had been made from a nugget of Welsh gold from which had come wedding rings for the Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.

The best-kept secret of the affair was Anne's gown--a white silk princess-line dress with flowing medieval sleeves. The 15 seamstresses, who made the gown for an off-the-rack fashion house that Anne has long favored over the royal dressmakers, had each sewn into the hem a lock of her hair. Tucked into the bridal bouquet of white roses, lilies of the valley and stephanotis was "something old" --a sprig of myrtle grown on the Isle of Wight from a sprig of Queen Victoria's wedding bouquet--and a bit of white heather for good luck.

After a wedding breakfast for 150 at the palace, the bride and groom made their traditional appearance on the palace balcony. The crowd, said Mark's father, retired Major Peter Phillips, "reminded me of V-E day." At one point the bridal party broke into laughter when Mark spotted a long white banner reading: "It's never too late to say 'neigh'--congratulations from the Royal Veterinary College." Mark, an Olympic gold medalist who shares Anne's passion for horses, turned to the princess and said: "Don't say nay."

The British press, predictably, had a field day. SUNSHINE PRINCESS is A STUNNER, bleated the London Evening News. MY PRINCESS, bannered the Daily Express possessively. Television built up to the big event with all the suspense of a moon shot. From fond accounts of Anne's girlhood visit to a monkey farm in Malta to interviews with the sexton who would ring the church bell in Mark's home town of Great Somerford, no detail seemed too trivial to mention.

Mawkish Ceremony. Some critics found the whole thing too mawkish for words. But most Britons thought it was just fine. "The greatest thing about the wedding," said Richard Vokey, a London merchant banker, "was that it got people's minds off the bad news. And it was also a sunny day. Everything helps." In a prewedding interview, Mark was asked about the huge play the nuptials were getting in the press. "It reflects a little bit the state of the world at the moment," he answered. "Every day people pick up the paper and read about some disaster or some new scandal, and I really think people are rather relieved to read about something that is genuinely happy and good."

After an open coach ride through London streets, the couple slipped away in a limousine to the country lodge on the outskirts of London of Anne's cousin Princess Alexandra and her husband Angus Ogilvy. The next day they flew to Barbados for an 18-day honeymoon cruise on the royal yacht Britannia through the Caribbean to the Galapagos Islands, to be followed by an official tour of Ecuador, Colombia, Jamaica and the islands of Montserrat and Antigua. Home, after that, will be an eleven-room house at Sandhurst Military Academy, where Mark will be an instructor. Anne has professed to be able to cook "a quick meal." Adds Mark: "I can recommend the scrambled eggs."

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